


bittersweet between my teeth

by soulofme



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Crimes & Criminals, M/M, Murder, Police Officer Shiro (Voltron), Scamming, Sugar Baby Keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-22 01:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15570834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulofme/pseuds/soulofme
Summary: Keith is a sugar baby scamming rich bastards out of their money and Shiro is the cop desperate to know him.





	bittersweet between my teeth

The sugaring starts, as most bad ideas do, with too much desperation and not enough time to think of a decent solution.

The night Keith finally gets sick of the Dowling’s house, he punches the husband, pretends he doesn’t hear the wife screaming bloody murder, and cleans out their rainy-day jar. He doesn't know how much is in there and isn't too concerned about it when he shoves the wad of cash into his duffel bag, between his three shirts and two pants. His life-savings, all in one convenient place.

Right now, the husband is still bleeding out on the kitchen floor, holding a pack of peas to his head. The wife is nursing over him as if he hadn’t tried to whore out their foster son a thousand and one times.

Keith doesn’t pay them any attention.

The husband says, “You’ll pay for this.”

Keith smiles. “See you in hell.”

There’s something immensely satisfying about how the door slams shut behind him upon his exit. It’s only when he’s hiking up their road, hands shoved into his pockets and duffel slung over his shoulder, that Keith can actually assess the situation.

He’s got a high school diploma, no job, and a bunch of stolen cash.

And he’s _fucked_.

He stays in motels for a few weeks, just until he can make his way into town. Nowhere high-class, because that’s out of budget. He scans the newspaper for apartments in his free time, something he hasn’t done in all eighteen years of his life.

He has been at it for a week or so when he sees the ad. A cheap apartment somewhere downtown. It’s a shitty area, one that Keith learned to survive in between homes. Before the Dowling’s, he spent his time selling counterfeit drugs until the orphanage scooped him back up into their arms.

Keith circles the ad twice with a marker and tucks the newspaper away.

He goes to see the apartment on a Saturday, when he has run out of pockets to pick and bread to steal. The landlord is an old Ukrainian woman who squints at him for a few painfully long minutes before she finally accepts his security deposit.

“Don’t break anything, don’t make too much noise, and,” she pauses, beady little eyes narrowing all over again, “ _no cops_.”

“Yes ma’am,” he says, flashing her a smile he hopes is charming.

The apartment has pastel yellow wallpaper, bleach-stained taupe carpeting, and roaches in the bathroom.

It’s _perfect_.

On days when he’s not sitting in his apartment and brooding, he cleans up at the local dinner. It’s run by some guy named Sal who’s at least seven feet tall and three hundred pounds. He’s got a nasty stink eye, but he lets Keith sweep up at the kitchen for a few bucks and free food.

He’s nice enough, Keith guesses. But foster care taught him survival skills that school never could. He can’t sweep floors for the rest of his life. Not if he wants to be somebody.

Sal’s cook is a woman not much older than Keith, with dark hair and a perpetual look of boredom on her face. He’s helping her scrape grease off the grills one night when she clears her throat to get his attention.

“You know,” she starts, low and quiet, “you’re pretty.”

Keith stiffens. Wonders where she’s going with that and decides he doesn’t really want to know.

“Thanks.” It's a safe answer. One that'll show he's not interested in continuing this conversation, wherever it may lead.

“People like pretty things,” she adds, setting her scraper aside. She places her hands on her hips and assesses him. “Especially _young_ pretty things.”

It becomes obvious, then, what she means. Keith’s mouth opens, ready to chew her out and storm out, maybe get a punch in if he can get over his father’s voice in his head telling him to _never_ hit a woman.

“Fuck you,” he grits.

It’s not as scathing as he’d like it to be.

“You can’t do this forever,” the cook says. She’s right and Keith knows it, which is the worst part of this all. She drums her long fingernails on the counter. “I know someone who can help you.”

“No thanks,” Keith snarls.

He does storm out then, but not before the cook presses a thin business card into his hand.

* * *

 

Keith ends up meeting Allura three weeks after his last night at Sal’s. She’s breathtaking, all dark skin and silver hair, long limbs and a delicate, _pretty_ face. She rests her chin in her palm and drags her eyes along the length of his body.

“You must be Keith,” she says, extending one dainty hand for him to take. “Sam told me about you. I’m Allura. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Keith shakes her hand but says nothing.

“What brings you here?” she asks.

Keith grits his teeth. _Desperation_ , he almost says. Doesn’t, though, because he has more pride than that. He leans back in his chair, tuning out the sounds of the other patrons in the café Allura has invited him to.

“What brings people to do anything?” Keith mutters.

Allura’s smile widens. There’s something oddly predatory about it.

“I can help you.”

Allura, it turns out, makes money through scamming. Not the most honest of businesses, but certainly good enough to pay the bills. Her newest scam is sugaring, which makes Keith nearly vomit when he hears the word. She herself doesn’t do anything, but she sets up anyone who’s interested in joining. Sex word is hard, she explains, and when you do it on your own it can become dangerous.

“It pays well, though,” Allura tells him, tracing the edge of her coffee mug. “ _Really_ well.”

He’ll get money and expensive gifts in exchange for sucking some old guy’s shriveling dick. Allura tells him that not everything boils down to sex, that some guys just want platonic companionship, that not all of them are _old_ , but Keith’s not an idiot.

He’s enough of one to accept her offer, in the end.

His first sugar daddy is a family man looking for something new. He has four boys and a wife who stays at home and takes care of the house. He’s not old (apparently Allura had been right about that). He’s mildly attractive at best, but his biggest downfall is that he has some really backwards 1950’s-esque ideas.

But he pays well and buys Keith all the fancy shit his wife refuses to wear, saying she’s _not that kind of woman._ Keith never wears any of those necklaces or rings. He pawns them off for cash when he’s too disgusted with himself to see his _sugar daddy_.

He loses his virginity in a shady motel and stays there long after Mike or John or whatever the fuck his name is leaves. Five-hundred bucks. A drop in the bucket, compared to what he got for that twenty-four-carat gold ring.

He scrubs the filth off in the shower, watching as it swirls down the drain to somewhere Keith can’t follow. He’s not disgusted with himself. Not now. Maybe it hasn’t set in yet. Maybe it’s because he’s seeing this as a pretty reliable source of income. At least until Mike gets tired of him.

Which, actually, doesn’t happen.

But like all good things, nothing is meant to last. Mike dies in a tragic car accident, leaving his kids and wife behind to pick up the pieces. Keith tells Allura the story more out of pity for himself than anything. Bye-bye rent money.

“That sounds horrible,” Allura replies. She doesn’t sound like she means it. Not really, which makes Keith suspicious.

“It wasn’t an accident, was it?” he asks, prepared to walk out on her and forget about this whole thing. He didn’t sign up for murder, goddamn it.

But Allura just reaches across the table for his hand, patting it reassuringly as she says, “Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out.”

Figuring it out entails bringing Allura’s friend, “Takashi Shirogane but call me Shiro”, into the mix. He’s a police officer, six feet tall and two hundred pounds of pure muscle. Broad shoulders, a jawline carved by the gods, and an insane need to help those in need.

Keith sneers the first time he gets sight of him. Yanks on Allura’s arm and drags her down the hall to his room, where he shuts the door and gets right in her face.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he asks.

Allura looks unperturbed as she answers, “He’s going to help.”

“Help,” Keith repeats flatly. Thinks of his landlord when he says, “He’s a fucking _cop_.”

“He’s a friend,” Allura corrects firmly. “He’s the only reason I’m still able to do this.”

“A fucking corrupt cop, then,” Keith amends, ignoring Allura’s eye roll. “I’m not doing this.”

“You wanted to be a pilot,” Allura murmurs, adjusting one of the thick silver bangles around her wrist. “But you gave up on that, didn’t you?”

Keith’s breath gets stuck in his throat.

“Fuck you,” he whispers. Hates how his voice cracks on the words, as if he’s still that little kid crying over his father’s grave, realizing that no one would ever give a shit about him again, that all his dreams might as well just crumble into dust.

“I’m giving you a chance, Keith,” Allura says. She reaches for his face, cradles his cheek in her hand, and he _lets_ her. “Don’t throw it away.”

Keith clenches his jaw and jerks away from her. Leaves her behind as he stomps into his living room, where Shiro is standing in front of the couch, staring at a bleach-stain with a frown on his face. He looks up when Keith clears his throat, raising his eyebrows slowly.

“Don’t fuck this up for me,” Keith says.

Shiro smiles.

“I won’t.”

* * *

 

The days go on. Keith’s newest sugar daddy drowns in a pool while on vacation in Cancun. Allura arrives the afternoon after, looking chipper as ever.

Keith swallows. Gathers his courage. Asks, “Why do you kill them?”

Allura looks thoughtful for a moment.

“They’re not good people,” she says. “None of us are, I suppose. But especially not them.”

Keith drums his fingers on the countertop. He’s in a new apartment now, in a nicer part of town. Floor to ceiling windows, a pool on the balcony, a spiraling staircase that leads to a spacious loft. It’s obnoxious, but it’s also obnoxiously _nice_. Allura had insisted on it, though it honestly hadn’t taken a lot of needling for Keith to put down his deposit.

“So you get rid of them,” Keith realizes. “For a price.”

Allura beams at him. “You’re getting it now.”

“Is that why Shiro helps you? Because you’re getting rid of the “bad guys”?”

“Shiro wanted to be a pilot too,” Allura says. “But he has certain…limitations. They told him he’d never make it in space, so he became a police officer instead. I always thought he was trying to make sense of the word, attempting to find some semblance of justice, but…”

She trails off, shrugging helplessly. Keith scoffs.

“The world sucks. Everyone knows that.”

Allura hums softly, stirring honey into her cup of tea. She leans against the counter, wrapping both hands around the mug and blowing softly across the top.

“He doesn’t agree with me, but he understands why I do it,” she says. “We’ve been through a lot together.”

“You must be close.”

Allura smiles.

“He’s a good friend.”

“Must be nice,” Keith mutters. Hates how bitter he sounds but does nothing to fix it.

“You should get to know him,” Allura suggests then, between quiet sips of tea. “You have a lot in common.”

“Like what?” Keith bites, crossing his arms over his chest. “Failed dreams? I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself,” Allura says. She finishes her tea and rinses the cup out in the sink. “Are you ready for another one?”

“No,” Keith says, almost choking on the word. He feels overwhelmed, all of a sudden, like the generously-sized apartment he’s in is too fucking small. “Not yet.”

Allura’s eyebrows furrow, but she doesn’t push. Keith’s beyond grateful for that.

“Alright,” she says agreeably, gathering up her purse and coat. “Call me when you are.”

* * *

 

He ends up not calling Allura, for a few days. It’s the longest he has gone without being some rich bastard’s dirty little secret.

But he does call Shiro.

Shiro, who Keith swears he can hear smiling on the other end of the line, who asks him if he’s ever seen the stars.

Shiro picks him up a quarter to midnight, right after Keith had spent the night watching reruns of old cop shows, wondering if Shiro is anything like the passionate detectives on television. They sit on the hood of Shiro’s car, overlooking the desert, where Keith smokes a cigarette down to the filter and Shiro leans back on his hands, neck tilted up to the sky.

“So,” Keith starts, voice rough from the tobacco, “a pilot.”

Shiro shrugs.

“I always liked space,” he says. It’s clear that he’s attempting to downplay it, that there’s more it than just _liking_ it.

“I would've gone to space,” Keith says, flicking ash off the knee of his jeans. “But then Dad died, and everything went to shit.”

“You had a hard life.”

“Don’t we all?”

“I guess,” Shiro agrees after a beat of hesitation. “So…space?”

Keith scowls.

“I was a stupid kid. It doesn’t matter now.”

“Some doors don’t always close,” Shiro says. Sounds like he ripped it straight from a fortune cookie, too, and Keith nearly says so. “Maybe you can still do it.”

“What about you?” Keith asks, twisting to face him. “You _want_ to be a cop?”

Shiro finally looks away from the sky. There’s a guarded expression on his face.

“It’s rewarding.”

“You’re covering up _murders_ ,” Keith hisses. “Isn’t that the opposite of your job?”

“Bad guys fall through the cracks all the time,” Shiro says. “I don’t personally go around killing them, but punishment comes in many forms.”

“You’re fucked,” Keith decides, flopping onto his back and not caring how hard his body thuds against the hood beneath him.

“We all are,” Shiro says, laying back as well.

They stare at each other, then, and Keith swallows hard. Looks away when Shiro’s eyes feel like they’re too warm, too soft.

“Sometimes the bad guys win,” he says, thinking of all the crappy families the system shoved on him. “Sometimes you can’t save everyone.”

“No,” Shiro mumbles, agreeing with Keith for the second time this night. “But I can try.”

Shiro drives him home well past four in the morning, when both of their eyes can barely stay open. Keith cranks the window down and lets his hand dangle outside, feeling the cool morning breeze dance between his fingers.

The pull up in front of Keith’s apartment building. It looms over them, looking like a dream, like something Keith could never have on his own. Without Allura, he’d still be mopping floors and crushing roaches in his bathroom, picking pockets and rummaging dumpsters for anything more than a crumb.

He swallows hard and turns towards Shiro, who’s watching him quietly.

“Thanks,” he gets out, grabbing onto the door handle.

“Keith.”

He ducks down, looking into the car. Shiro smiles at him. It’s painfully genuine.

“Don’t forget what I said.”

Keith scowls and slams the door shut.

* * *

 

He doesn’t realize it, at first, when he and Shiro begin to become some butchered version of friends.

Keith had been young when his father died, young enough that his old man hadn’t passed on things like _be nice to others_ or _always share_. He went through school with a chip on his shoulder, believing than he was above everyone around him, unconcerned with making friends when he knew he’d be shipped off to another home within a month or so.

So he knows that whatever this thing is with Shiro is incredibly delicate. Strange, mostly, but also somewhat nice. Allura gives him knowing looks whenever he mentions it, looks that make him feel nervous, and he takes it all in stride before snapping one day.

“Do you know something I don’t?” he spits.

Allura shrugs.

“Perhaps.”

“Don’t fuck with me.”

“I think you’re good for him,” Allura says.

 _For_.  _For_ him, as if Keith and Shiro are meant to be together or some stupid bullshit like that.

“No,” Keith says instantly. He grits his teeth together hard enough to hurt. “ _No_.”

Allura’s expression goes cold.

“Don’t hurt him.”

“Hurt him?” Keith snaps. “He knows who I am, what I _do_. He knows that there’s no fucking way I’ll ever run off into the sunset with him.”

“Yes,” Allura says cautiously, “but he also knows that behind all of that armor, you’re just as lost as he is.”

“I’m not lost,” Keith hisses. “I found my way.”

“You can’t do this forever,” Allura says. She sounds so much like the cook from Sal’s that it _hurts_. “A pretty face only lasts for so long.”

“You pulled me into this. Let’s not forget that.”

“ _Shiro_ ,” Allura begins, stressing his name so much that Keith nearly flinches, “is a good man. You deserve someone like that. You deserve happiness.”

He’s taken aback by that. No one has ever said anything like that before. Not even close. Years spent bouncing around in the system taught him that no one gave a damn whether he lived or died. He could only trust himself, and sometimes even that felt iffy.

“People like me don’t get happiness,” he says, pretending there aren’t tears in his eyes. “We just get disappointments.”

“Then…” Allura reaches for him, pulling Keith into her. He goes willingly, pressing his face into his shoulder, biting back a sob. “Let him be a disappointment.”

* * *

 

It takes a while for Keith to confront Shiro, between the sugaring and the murders. He finally does, months after his conversation with Allura, and tells himself he’s not anxious to bring it up even when his heart beats like a drum in his ears.

“Do you ever wish your life turned out differently?” Keith asks.

They’re in his apartment, watching some shitty comedy and pretending that it’s funny. There’s tension brewing between them, a foreboding feeling of something about to explode, and Keith just lets it build and build and _build_.

“Sometimes,” Shiro admits, hardly louder than a whisper. “I keep telling myself that this is the path I was supposed to take. That it doesn’t matter if things worked out how I wanted them to.”

“Sounds like you’re good at lying to yourself.”

Shiro smirks. “It’s more of an art than anything, really.”

His expression goes from amused to soft when he looks at Keith.

“What about you?”

“Me?” Keith asks, snorting. “Never thought about it. Everything around me goes to shit sooner or later. Doesn’t really matter what I do.”

“I think you’re wrong,” Shiro says.

“I fuck men for their money,” Keith says, shaking his head, “and then I let them get murdered. Sounds pretty shitty to me.”

“You’re getting shitty people off the streets,” Shiro amends gently. “Sounds like a good deal to _me_.”

“Why’d you give up on piloting?” Keith asks.

Shiro blinks, clearly taken aback, and doesn’t answer for a few long moments.

“Muscular dystrophy,” he finally says. “A few years at best at peak condition. That’s why I’m writing traffic tickets instead of going to Mars.”

“Shit.” Keith sits up straight. “Fuck. I'm sorry.”

Shiro shrugs, playing it off.

“It hasn’t changed much.”

“Except your dreams.”

“Right,” Shiro says faintly. “Except that.”

Keith clenches his jaw and stares at the television, preparing himself for his next words.

“My dad was a fireman,” he says, voice hushed. “I always admired him. Told myself I wanted to do something that would make a difference.”

“Keith…”

“He knew he could die anytime he went to put a fire out, but that didn’t stop him from living. He wasn’t scared of anything. But me? I was a little coward. My own shadow spooked me.”

Shiro stares at him, waiting for him to continue. Keith swallows hard and pushes on.

“Every time I looked at the sky, it freaked me out. Nobody really knows what’s up there. People can tell you all the stories they want, but you’ll never believe them unless you see it for yourself. I guess that’s why I wanted to be a pilot. I wanted to prove that I was just as brave as my dad.”

“You are brave, Keith,” Shiro says, sounding far too earnest. “More than you think you are.”

“Why do you even care about me?” Keith asks, unable to stop himself. “Allura, I get. You have history. But you don’t know me.”

“I’d like to, though. If you’d let me.”

Keith sucks in a breath. He can’t look Shiro in the eye. Not after that.

“You’re crazy,” he settles on.

Shiro laughs, a little breathlessly.

“I have to be, to agree with all this.”

“Right.” Keith snorts.

Shiro clears his throat quietly. Keith glances over, raising a brow when he sees the complicated expression on his face.

“It’s up to you,” he says. He doesn’t say anything else, probably due to the smear of red across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose.

Keith bites at the inside of his cheek.

“You mean that?”

Shiro nods, so quick, so honest, that Keith’s heart physically _aches_. He coughs to hide the laugh that bubbles in his throat. This is crazy. All of this absolutely crazy, and he has no idea how his life managed to take this turn.

“Shiro.”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

He hesitates before he leans over, pressing a kiss to Shiro’s cheek. His skin is warm and soft beneath his lips, and this close Keith can smell the spicy scent of his aftershave. He pulls back, resting against the couch as he flicks absently through the channels.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Shiro’s wide smile.


End file.
